The effects of paper physical properties on print gloss and ink mileage

This research involved two kinds of printing process, inkjet printing and gravure printing.;Five commercial Epson and Kodak inkjet papers were printed on three Epson ink jet printers. Paper surface roughness was tested by a Parker Print-Surf (PPS) tester, stylus profilometer and an atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM and profilometer roughness showed higher correlations with paper gloss and print gloss. For microporous Epson papers, higher print gloss was found with the Pro 5500 and Photo 2200 printers using pigment-based inks than the Pro 5000 printer using dye-based inks. The ink types had less effect on print gloss for resinous Kodak papers. Study of the black ink film surface using AFM proved that dyed ink films resulted in smoother ink film surfaces than pigmented ones.;Two gravure printing trials were performed on a rotogravure web press. Five commercial LWC papers were used in the first trial, and five trial coated papers were used in the second trial. AFM roughness showed the best correlations with both 60° and 75° paper and print gloss, while PPS roughness was the worst.;Ink film coat weight was measured using an internal tracer method. Commercial toluene based gravure inks were marked with the tracer, which can be detected analytically and used to calculate ink film coat weight. The ink film coat weight versus relative print density data was plotted and curve fitting was performed using six previous proposed models. The models that were used to fit laboratory results were also found useful for pilot plant press results. Oittinen model and Calabro-Savagnone model fitted the experimental data better than the other four models, measured by the sum of the square of residuals and their distribution around zero point. These two models were used to study ink mileage characteristics. Permeability and pore size were found to have more effects on regression coefficients derived from curve fitting than roughness. Ink requirement of black ink is much less than those of cyan and magenta inks. Magenta ink had higher ink mileage than cyan ink except at very low coat weight.